Library Collections: Document: Full Text

But a wise Providence had otherwise ordered the events of this sad drama. For some purpose, hitherto unrevealed, this malign plot must have been executed just as it has been, and this dear mother could not be allowed to be where she might have intercepted its progress.

But there is one mystery attending this plot which no ingenuity or skill has yet been able to fathom. It is this:

A few weeks prior to my incarceration, a stranger stopped at Mr. Blessing's hotel for two days and one night. He claimed to be the "Brother of Mrs. Packard," that he had been sent by her mother to deliver her out of the hands of her cruel and unfeeling husband -- that he had just arrived in port at Boston, Mass., and had there been told to "Go to your sister at once! for she is in most imminent peril, and there is no power to rescue her from her impending doom." And he added:

"I have come to deliver her out of the hands of her husband, and I shall do so! even if I have to resort to the aid of this six-barrelled revolver to do it!" at the same time showing his pistol.

Crowds collected at the Hotel to hear his strange story and the revelations he had to make of Mr. Packard's private character. Among other witnesses was my son, Isaac, then about sixteen years of age. In reporting this interview to me he said:

"Mother, I never saw any one who could relate family incidents with more accuracy and in minute detail than he did, and he even narrated events which no one knew outside, of our family. Indeed, had he been in our family for ten years past, he could not have described our family scenes more accurately and promptly. In detailing father's treatment of you, he would often burst into tears and exclaim: "No one can know what that kind, patient woman has suffered from him -- her relentless tormentor."

The community set a guard about our house to defend Mr. Packard's life, thus threatened, for about one week, after the disappearance of this stranger from the place.

Who this stranger was -- by whom sent -- how he received his information about the secret incidents of our family -- and whither he went, is all unknown.

But to me, who can realize the intensity of my dear mother's love for her only daughter, it seems like a plot of desperation, similar to what the devoted love of a true mother might be driven to resort, rather than have the object of her tenderest love uncared for -- unpitied -- and unprotected.

CHAPTER XI.
Mr. Packard a Beggar.

Fidelity to the truth requires me to add one more melancholy fact, in order to make this narrative of events complete, and that is, Mr. Packard has made merchandise of this stigma of Insanity with which he has branded me, and used it as a lucrative source of gain to himself, in the following manner:

He has made most pathetic appeals to the sympathies of the public for their charities to be bestowed upon him, on the plea of his great misfortune in having an insane wife to support -- one who is incapable of taking care of herself or her six children -- and on this false premise he has based a most pathetic argument and appeal to their sympathies for pecuniary help, in the form of boxes of clothing for himself and his destitute and defenseless children!

These appeals have been most generously responded to from the American Home Missionary Society.

When I returned to my home from the Asylum, I counted twelve boxes of such clothing, some of which were very large, containing the spoils he had thus purloined from this benevolent society, by entirely false representations.

My family were not destitute. But on the contrary, were plentifully supplied with a superabundant amount of such Missionary gifts, which had been lavished upon us, at his request, before I was imprisoned. I had often said to him, that I and my children had already more than a supply for our wants until they were grown up.

Now, what could he do with twelve more such boxes!

My son, Isaac, then in Chicago, and twenty-one years of age, told me he had counted fifty new vests in one pile, and as many pants and coats, and overcoats, and almost everything else, of men's wearing apparel, in like ratio.

He said a pile of dress patterns had accumulated intended for my use from these boxes, to one yard in depth in one solid pile. And this was only one sample of all kinds of ladies' apparel which he had thus accumulated, by his cunningly-devised begging system.

Still, to this very date, he is pleading want and destitution as a basis for more charities of like kind.

He has even so moved the benevolent sympathies of the widow Dickinson with whom he boarded, as to make her feel that he was an honest claimant upon their charities in this line, on the ground of poverty and destitution. She accordingly started a subscription to procure him a suit of clothes, on the ground of his extreme destitution, and finally succeeded in begging a subscription of one hundred and thirteen dollars for his benefit, and presented it to him as a token of sympathy and regard.